Good evening. The text for this evening will be Psalm 131, but don't turn there just yet. If you would please first turn with me to 2 Corinthians chapter 1. I felt uh very honored or privileged to be present for the signing of the founding documents for the association that's recently been formed here in Western Canada. Our church, Trinity Reformed Baptist Church, from on whose behalf I bring you greetings. We pray regularly uh for the association churches here in Western Canada. We we prayed for you before you were an association, but now all the more as an association. And as many of you will know, our church is also part of a local or regional association. And I've been a a pastor in an association church for some years. And I I know personally the benefit and the joy and the blessing that it is and can be. It doesn't always seem so exciting. Sometimes regular meetings are quite simple and sound very much like the last one you had and the next one you had. But those regular meetings become a platform, a relationship within which the more serious things can take place both posit positively in cooperative e efforts and negatively when one church has serious issues and needs help and they know whom they can trust and who will help them. So I want to encourage you in what you have begun that you would continue it and rejoice in what the Lord has given to you. In in 2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 11, Paul says, "You also must help us by prayer." In our local association in Southern California, some of the churches, we're we're blessed to be very local, but some of the churches are still three hours away from each other. and I feel like I don't see them as often and I feel like I don't help them very much. Not that they need my help, but I feel like what what are we doing for them? And it's passages like this that encourage me. Paul says, "Help us by prayer." We pray for your churches in Canada and we would ask you to pray for us. You can help your sister churches here and you can help other churches simply by striving with the Lord in prayer on their behalf. And turn over to Colossians 4:12. In Colossians 4:12, Paul says, "Eperris, who is one of you, a servant of Christ, Jesus, greets you, always struggling on your behalf in his prayers." If he's sending greetings, he's not with them right now. Apaffris isn't there, but he can still struggle for the Colossians from wherever he is through prayer. So, please be assured of our prayers, our struggling for you, our helping you to use the language of 2 Corinthians. And we would ask you to do the same for
